Hiding
by royslady51
Summary: Rose overheard the Doctor persuading his clone that dropping Rose with him would work...and hid somewhere in the TARDIS at JE instead of debarking like she was supposed to. She ignored the injury she'd gotten during the emergency and stayed hidden until infection forced her out of her hiding place.
1. Prologue

SUMMARY: Rose overheard the Doctor persuading his clone that dropping Rose with _him _would work...and hid somewhere in the TARDIS at JE instead of debarking like she was supposed to. She ignored the injury she'd gotten during the emergency and stayed hidden until infection forced her out of her hiding place.

**Hiding**

**Prologue**

The TARDIS couldn't communicate with Rose well enough to let her know when they were back in the proper universe so she'd come out of that tiny, distant little garden where the Doctor had never gone.

Rose knew from the way the lights in the halls dimmed and turned purple when the Doctor finally took one of his rare rest periods, realized he wouldn't sleep until they'd left Pete's World, gave it a few hours to be sure and finally snuck out of her hiding place, moving slowly down the long corridor and into the infirmary. The TARDIS moved it closer and left out the right kind of ointment for the girl but didn't really like the look of the cut so she moved the infirmary next door to the Doctor's bedroom and put in an adjoining door...Rose was concentrating too hard on what she was doing and did not notice either the motion of the room nor the opening door. Rose had rolled some gauze so she'd have something to bite down on, surrounded the wound with towels and used one of the Doctor's scalpels to open and drain it. She'd gotten spoiled by his pain-free treatments over the bulk of the two years she'd been with him, but Rose was a child of the poor quarters, this wasn't the first time she'd had to perform some rough and ready bit of minor surgery or deal with a badly infected cut...her's or someone else's.

She hissed in near silence as she cut open the pus filled injury, holding a clean towel over it as the sudden opening caused an explosive release of pressure and pus shot up and into the cloth held ready to catch it. Tears of pain streamed down her face but she didn't make a sound as she finally folded the mess inside one towel and covered her wound with another as she tossed the first one in the trash. She continued to cut, to open the infection riddled injury, removing destroyed tissue and setting it on a third towel until it bled clean blood, but before it began to clot...now she applied a pressure bandage for a bit until the blood ceased to flow and rested for a few moments.

She closed her eyes against the pain and tried to gather her strength...and felt a hypospray against her neck and the agony she'd been in dissipated into nothing as other hands took over the task.

"You _hid _from me." The Doctor's voice shook a little. "You've _never_ hidden from me. Especially not when you're badly injured."

"You were going to leave me. The first time nearly killed me, you know? After a couple weeks, I had headaches all the time and I stayed sick. I think the other one was rejecting my presence there."

He paused for a second and then continued to work on the cut. "You didn't tell me that."

"When did I have the chance? We _were_ a bit busy."

"True. And you didn't tell me about _this _either." He sounded hurt and angry at her.

Normally, she would have said something to avoid a confrontation but her strength was all but gone, just now. She needed it for herself, just this once. "I was going to...and I found you telling the other one you wanted to throw me away." She bit back a sob.

He froze. "Rose, _no_...I never meant it like that. _He _could have aged _with _you...as I can't." He brushed her hair back away from her face. "I never wanted to leave you. I just thought I _had _to. When you love someone, you do what is best for them, not yourself." He told her quietly.

She said nothing else for a moment, refused to look at him even, just watched his hands as he worked on her leg. "I can't either, anymore. I was in Pete's World for twenty years before I found a way back to you." She finally said, in a near whisper. "I seriously doubt you can tell from looking at me. I heard what you said about him needing a leash, but there's another woman there already that'll do fine. There's an alternate Sarah Jane and our her kept a leash on how many of your regenerations?"

"Several. Yeah, he'll be fine." He finished up closing the deep gash and then continued, "I'll need to do some tests to see what's going on with you, but you still look nineteen to me, not thirty-nine."

"Yeah. Their Torchwood was starting to notice."

"Ah. Yeah, not safe." He nodded and confirmed, "Far safer with me."

She looked up at him with tears in her eyes and running down her face. "I love you, too."

**~ TBC ~**


	2. First Impressions

SUMMARY: The Doctor does some hard thinking and reassesses what he _thought _he knew about Rose.

A/N: I'm doing some 'background' set up for the first few chapters. Some of these will be short as a result.

Warning: Cursing/Depression trigger Possible.

**FIRST IMPRESSIONS**

The Doctor cursed silently to himself as he reached out silently to gather Rose to himself, holding her closely while she shivered wordlessly. He knew better than to trust first impressions, particularly in the sort of woman that made a good fit with him on the TARDIS. Sexy had never truly picked on this one, a few minor tricks to show Rose who was actually in charge and then she'd settled down to spoiling the girl. It always seemed as if the timeship understood Rose better than he did. He heard a loud mental snort from the ship but his bonded TARDIS said nothing else.

"You know, medical care is free in England...so why and how, did you learn to do that?" He asked quietly. "You did well, clearly this wasn't the first time you've had to do it."

"Free hospital only works if you have the money for petrol, for a car, your's or someone else's. If not, you do what needs doing."

"Could have called for an ambulance."

"Not everyone on the Estates has a phone."

He wasn't really liking the new impressions he was getting. The people on the estates that he'd met had always seemed happy enough. The deprivation Rose was describing was nowhere on the surface...but he knew better than to trust that sort of impression too. Gently, he began to prod, asking her to show him what she'd learned to do on her own. He grew quiet, his eyes intent on what she was showing him, though from time to time he asked, "When did you learn this? How old were you? That young? Really? Clever girl!" The encouragement came so that she wouldn't see the inner rage and intense satisfaction that Jackie was no longer in this universe. Having a far too young Rose learn to perform minor to medium surgeries on her mother's various boyfriends from age six explained a lot about her reaction to his own peril at various times, from the very beginning.

Her answers, tinged in shock to his praises enraged him further for both her mum and her mum's 'friends' had been calling her 'stupid' from the cradle. Truthfully, any other companion he'd ever had would have called him on his last body's 'stupid ape' comments...Rose had accepted them...and now he knew why. It hadn't been, as he'd assumed, that she knew he was teasing. It made his gut ache understand she'd agreed with the comment because she'd been trained from childhood to _believe _it. He had, with his huge brain and bragging about his own intelligence, re-enforced that idea. Worse, he had a pretty good idea why she had sacreficed herself on Satellite Five...and it made his throat ache with the tears he wanted to cry.

Because people who are basically selfless to start with and who have been raised to believe themselves without value, do not hesitate to put people whom they consider far more 'worthy' ahead of themselves. Even before Canary Wharf or Bad Wolf, occaisionally he'd seen something dark in Rose's eyes, something she'd brushed off as 'nothing' when he'd asked at the time. He recalled the times she'd bowed her head at first, before she knew her place was to keep his actions in check and stepped up to do her 'job'...

He didn't know when he'd sat on the exam table and pulled his pink and yellow human into his lap, arms cradling her against himself, rocking her gently. He didn't stop when he finally noticed, though, not when one look at her face let him know she had no idea why anyone would _want _to. This told him that this could well be the first time since she was in diapers that anyone had. Oh yes, she was well away from Jackie Tyler. And he'd almost left her there in a universe that made her ill, with a him that would die on her in a few decades and with that bitch of a mother of her's.

It took a while before he realized he was whispering, "I'm sorry, I'm _so _sorry" to her and had been for a while. He had a lot to make up for and he needed to recondition her mind. This was going to take a long time, he understood that. If he had studied her like he had so many other before her and had understood how she thought right from the start, he'd have never taken her to that damned platform to watch her planet burn. All that had really done was to re-enforce her sense of worthlessness.

And now he had a young woman whom he loved more than anything, who had been hurting this way for long before he'd known her...and knew he'd made it worse. She had no one else and he knew that no one else would suspect just how fragile Rose was, when all was said and done. She had years of practice in never letting it show, after all. She was better at that than _he_ was, damn it all. The hard part was that he couldn't allow her to know he was working on her. Outwardly, he couldn't be seen to change much...some changes would be expected, actually...and those would at least allow him to hold her closely...in bed _and_ out of it.

**~ TBC ~**


	3. Hold On

SUMMARY: This time, the Doctor doesn't ask permission to do what he knows needs doing. He moves slowly, gently but steadily toward greater intimacy with Rose. And it starts when he asks the TARDIS to move her things into his room...because if she'd trusted him, she wouldn't have hidden instead of confronting him. For the first time in his lives, he encourages a human female to cling.

**Hold On**

He settled with her, with a full, High Tea, in the library, silently requesting his TARDIS to move Rose's things into his own quarters and put her bed back into storage. For the time being, he didn't intend to let Rose out of his sight. When eventually they finished their Tea and cleaned up, he wordlessly put his arm around her waist and lead her to the console room.

"We need some alone time, Rose...but not really Vortex Time. Earth is safest, for the period I intend to use...and if anything were to happen while we're there, well...that's Third's problem. He's hanging about during that Time and Sexy will let her younger self know where we are and when we're from...which me I am, and all that. But I don't recall needing to help me on anything that far back in Earth's history. Unless I forgot, but, hey, whatever, right? We might have one or two mes drop in, though."

She nodded. "So, where...?"

"And when. Well, the when is the 12th Century, the where is an uninhabited island in the Southern Pacific Ocean that won't be discovered by humans for at least five hundred years. Rather large and very beautiful with human _and _Time Lord compatible fruit hanging from the trees, several springs with sweet, fresh water and other things, edible berries and the like on lower shrubs or vines. A warm, even hot, tropical place with sand and surf, fresh seafood available and no one but us. I want some time alone with you, Rose. You need to understand you are precious to me. I've told you before, but you've never really believed me, have you?" His voice was completely serious, his eyes both serious and saddened, with what he knew now.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized that there were limits on what he could do to help her heal by himself...some of the damage had been inflicted, albeit unknowingly and completely unintentionally by his previous personality. And she still trusted Ninth in ways she didn't trust this him. Of course, Ninth had never abandoned her and another companion on an abandoned space ship either, then pulled this latest stunt.

Some of Rose's distrust and nervousness with him _was _entirely his own fault, but some wasn't. Most wasn't, in fact. Most of it could be laid squarely at Jackie's feet. He finally understood just how much it had taken to get Rose's trust to start with. She had trusted Ninth _because _he wasn't human, rather than in spite of it. It was humans she didn't trust. That was, basically, why she had never fallen for Jack...he was human and _therefore_, not to be trusted. The Doctor rather suspected _he _trusted humans more than Rose did.

Even the TARDIS was being a little gentler with Rose than usual and it was notable because she was usually careful with her anyway.

_**She may be Bad Wolf and the Avatar of the Time Vortex, but her soul is human and hurting.**_ Sexy murmured in his mind. _**But it has been hurting in this way from her childhood so she doesn't know it's **_**not **_**supposed to hurt.**_

It took a great deal of willpower for him to show no reaction to that bit of information in front of his sharp-eyed human girl. _Talk to Ninth, explain...he needs to heal her then or else come and heal her now...but either way, the start of it has to come from him. All those 'stupid ape' remarks just convinced her that her mother was correct and that she really is worthless...as did the visit to that damned platform. He can call her precious all he likes but until he convinces her that she _**is **_precious... _His hands moved with steady confidence as he located the place and time needed, and sent the timeship hurtling toward that untouched tropical island paradise.

_**On it.**_

As he landed, he noted in the monitor that the Ninth was already there, leaning against his TARDIS. Tenth sent Rose out first. "There's...someone who needs to talk to you. Alone. He can't stay forever, Rose, but there's things you need to talk to him about and there's things he needs to make you understand." Tenth's voice was quiet, but a little rough. "But he'll be here as long as it takes. I'll be out in a bit. Need to stabilize a few things before I get too close to him."

"Who...?"

"Me. _Last_ me, actually."

Her eyes got huge. "_Why_...?"

"Because you need us...at _least_ two of us, possibly _three_. Dunno yet. Come on, then, give me a hug then...and then go out there and give Ninth me another one."

**~ TBC ~**


End file.
